Mr. Segretti told me over the phone from his Orange County law office
that he was appalled to learn robo-calls may have been used to provide
misleading polling-station information to Canadian voters on election
day.

“We never tried to do something that would, at the end of the
day, take away the right of somebody to vote,” he said. “That goes
beyond a prank. It’s just wrong, on many levels.”

Their dirty tricks campaign, Mr. Segretti claimed, was designed to disrupt the Democrats, not hoodwink voters.

Let's keep something in mind here. Donald Segretti was one element of a political machine. There were others of which he was not aware. That's pretty clear from the history we now know.

Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever
asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done
without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that
worked on swing ridings.

My first thought was that it was just another attempt to deflect blame, but I had not let go of the idea that maybe this was a slip of information. While I didn't dismiss it completely, I wasn't sure that such a sophisticated mechanism was likely.

Its almost enough to restore ones faith in Democracy, but in the end I expect Lucy Harper will snatch the football and that will be it until 2015. In 2015 once again democracy will be issue 302 on the voters radar.

“Mr. Spiro is a “brilliant mind” who was a key adviser and top organizer on the federal Conservatives’ recent [2008] electoral successes. He focused on helping the Conservative Party win several of the swing ridings in the last election to increase their seat count in the House of Commons by 20 seats."